The blog world is wonderful, but there are downsides.  One of those that I’ve been ignoring for a long time is sites that steal content from bloggers.  I’m not talking about the people who use a picture or highlight a favorite project, but people who rip off entire posts and either claim them as their own or “collect all of your favorite blogs in one place.”  Those sites might seem convenient for readers, but it is theft.  Can you imagine if I gathered all of my favorite magazine articles, cut the pages out, scanned them, put together my own magazine and then made money from ads and subscriptions claiming I’m offering this great service of “collecting all of your favorite magazine articles in one magazine”?   Well, that is what is happening to bloggers.  We work hard to create our content and then it’s swiped automatically from our feeds and published without our knowledge or permission.  Those people then sit back and collect ad revenue on content they didn’t create.  Some of my blogger buddies have decided to do something about it and so am I.

So, after three years of blogging and offering my full posts through feeds, I’ve made the difficult decision to truncate my feeds.  This means that if you subscribe by e-mail or through a reader, you will only be able to see the first part of my posts and will then have to click over to my blog to read the post in its entirety.  I’m so sorry about this.  I read a lot of blogs through e-mail and it’s a bummer to have to click over and wait for the page to load, but I’m asking you to understand that as the blog world changes, bloggers have to adapt.  If you choose to unsubscribe from my blog, you will be missed, but you can simply click the “unsubscribe” linked text at the bottom of the e-mail or in your reader.  That’s okay.  I won’t take it personally.  I know you have busy lives and you have to protect your time.

I do hope, though, that my posts are worth that one click and that you’ll continue to follow me on this amazing journey.

Right now, my work time is about getting ready to fill my space at Lucketts with milk paint!  Yay!!  I have seventeen boxes of merchandise that my family is going to help me price tonight.  On Thursday, Faith, my husband and I are going to haul it all down and fill the shelves.  I’m also going to work on my space while I’m there.  I’m pretty excited about it.  For those who didn’t know, I moved from the small alcove in Karen’s room to the lobby.  It’s a perfect spot for the paint, but it’s a tough place to arrange furniture in.  It’s basically a triangle.  While I was at Lucketts last week, I expressed my frustration with my furniture arranging skills in the space to Suzanne and Amy, designers extraordinaires.  As I was rattling through my hang-ups, Amy stopped and asked, “Do you want us to help you with it?”  Oh my gosh, YES!  That would be amazing.  I switched gears from pointing out what wasn’t working to sharing my vision for the space.

I love the hardware counter I purchased for the space, but we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s too wide and a slim counter in the  front of a slim over-sized hutch would work better.  Amy and Suzanne not only gave me some great direction, but they’re going to help me execute it by loaning pieces to me until we find the perfect ones and moving pieces into place.  I really can’t be in a better shop.  This is the piece that will be the “slim counter”….

It’s an antique counter that was used to store shirts.  the top and three sides are glass and then the back side (or front side, depending on how you look at it) is all wooden drawers with labels.  How perfect is that??  I can put some of the paint in each drawer and label the colors.  Love it!  Suzanne swapped it with me for the hardware counter and we’re both happy.

And the drawers are very sturdy and function well, which is important.

Suzanne and Amy are also going to loan my space a very cool library-esque cabinet until we find a cool, old general-store-ish hutch/cabinet thing.  Exciting stuff!!

By the way, Lucketts is having a huge Labor Day sale this weekend (August 31 – Sept 3, 2012) and their sales are epic.  It’s worth the drive if you can make it (well, maybe not from Anchorage, but it’s worth a day trip!)  The Design House will also be open and that’s always a treat.